Update on players RedCafe wanted over the summer

dasty

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Really wanted Bruno to join us this summer and still have not changed my mind about it. Sporting's poor form might give us a chance of signing him for a slightly lower price.
 

FootballHQ

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Dybala doing well for Juve although from memory loads on the Cafe didn't want him!

I always felt it was odd Juventus were trying to squeeze him out as felt he was the sort who could flourish in Sarri's style of play and so it is proving so far.
 

FootballHQ

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Really wanted Bruno to join us this summer and still have not changed my mind about it. Sporting's poor form might give us a chance of signing him for a slightly lower price.
Could be like Ander Herrera, Moyes wanted him, didn't happen and he then turned up under the next manager.
 

André Dominguez

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Main issue is a lot of that talent is either too young or past their best...and we've also been devastated by injuries.

We do need another guy like Valverde in midfield though
No team will ever be foolproof, no mather how much money you spent. Sometimes you hire player X that seems to have what you need just to realize that some players perform like they did because the interaction with other team mates made it easy, and now they have team mates that do different things on pitch and that affects the quality of their performances.

IMO you guys have a terrific squad with tons of potential, but the pressure of Real's shirt might be too big for some players to handle it.
 

André Dominguez

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Dybala doing well for Juve although from memory loads on the Cafe didn't want him!

I always felt it was odd Juventus were trying to squeeze him out as felt he was the sort who could flourish in Sarri's style of play and so it is proving so far.
squeeze him... for a world record transfer fee. Thtat's why he didn't go anywhere. Juve doesn't sell cheap, and they were asking a pornographic amount for him.
 

FootballHQ

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squeeze him... for a world record transfer fee. Thtat's why he didn't go anywhere. Juve doesn't sell cheap, and they were asking a pornographic amount for him.
Wasn't it Dybala himself who was asking for loads? I'm pretty sure both clubs were happy to do a deal but he didn't want to leave Juve.
 

UpWithRivers

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I'd take all those players right now. Revisit this thread in 1,2,3 seasons and I can guarantee that at least 2 or 3 will turn out to be brilliant signings.
There are always flops but no one can predict that. The experts... scouts, managers, coaches etc with far more football knowledge than anyone in the CAF at Real, Juve etc thought they were class players. Even outside the club football experts said they were great. I read a quote from Luis Campos the guy who unearthed Mpbabe etc saying that Pepe is great even after his poor start.
So you can't say told u so after 10 games. You can't say it after 1000 games. It's how football works.
 

Ish

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To be fair, they actually made a good transfer activity. They have the individual talent, but they still have not a proper collective union.
Yeah, for sure they did. No denying that. I was more pointing to the fact that their rebuild is also not done after 1 summer.

But tbf, there’s a middle ground to threads or opinions like these in the OP. We needed more players and we possibly could have gotten 1 or 2 more in but also as the OP says, you have to sometimes be patient and sign the right player, instead of just throwing massive amounts of money around at the flavor of the month type signings.
 

Ish

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Wasn't it Dybala himself who was asking for loads? I'm pretty sure both clubs were happy to do a deal but he didn't want to leave Juve.
He was asking for high wages but I think the issue also became the fact that his image rights are not owned by juventus (or the player) outright. A third party owns either a part or all of his image rights and they wanted another massive amount for it.
 

TMDaines

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There's a load of players we can have few regrets for not signing, but I think Bruno is one we should reconsider.
 

André Dominguez

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Yeah, for sure they did. No denying that. I was more pointing to the fact that their rebuild is also not done after 1 summer.

But tbf, there’s a middle ground to threads or opinions like these in the OP. We needed more players and we possibly could have gotten 1 or 2 more in but also as the OP says, you have to sometimes be patient and sign the right player, instead of just throwing massive amounts of money around at the flavor of the month type signings.
I can totally relate to that. I still think that United should risk a bit more on the lower market transfers, like we did with Daniel James. Because if we only make an offer on a player when he's playing on his country top team, we are going to pay for it.

If we risk and hire them before that move, we can get a good bargain, and pay 5 times less. Because IMO a quality player will impose himself doesn't matter how much steps he climb.
 

Ish

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I can totally relate to that. I still think that United should risk a bit more on the lower market transfers, like we did with Daniel James. Because if we only make an offer on a player when he's playing on his country top team, we are going to pay for it.

If we risk and hire them before that move, we can get a good bargain, and pay 5 times less. Because IMO a quality player will impose himself doesn't matter how much steps he climb.
Yeah I agree with you bud. There are definitely bargains to be had, especially when the system implemented is greater than any one individual.
 

Okey

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Well, the one still tearing up the Portuguese league should still be available eh? Team struggling a bit too. Worth a punt in January surely...
 

DVG7

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OP i'm assuming you'll be looking forward to it being 2020 next year, because your hindsight is quite remarkable. It's a great point to consider that the majority of our proposed transfer targets haven't gone on to hit the huge heights that we might have expected, but all things considered that really isn't an indicator of how good or bad they would have been playing under different coaches, different teammates and deployed according to different tactics.

If we had signed De Ligt it would have been hailed as one of our biggest transfer coups. Based on everything we know about him, you'd have to expect that he will go on to have a career as a world class defender. Any player as young as he is, who has only known one club and one style of football, should automatically be given at least one full season of adjustment.

If we had signed Pepe, all the threads about signing a Right Winger could have been locked. Having watched a fair amount of his games last season, his talent was so obvious and even though it was an inferior league, the gulf between him and other players making their living as a professional footballer was absolutely huge. He's another who should be given the necessary time to adjust, though I do think his transfer fee was a bit too high, especially considering Arsenal seemed to be the only realistic candidates for signing him.

If we had signed Jovic, i'm not too sure there would have been much hysteria, particularly when you consider his impact on our hypothesized set up. From the base it looks like a young, quick counter attacking team that presses from the front, and i'm not sure how well he fits in to that style. I don't ever remember us being anywhere near favourites to sign him, nor any reliable journalists pretty certain that we were even in for him, so as far as this forum wanting him it was most likely just off the back of looking at his goal record without considering how his individual playing style would actually synchronize with the rest of the team.

Bruno Fernandes may very well still sign with us, and whilst he's "stuck" in a league where he looks like the best player, only the gift of foresight will tell us whether or not he can be good for us or anyone else for that matter.

And as always, there is a counter argument, in that there are so many players we were linked with and the forum was pretty excited about that have gone on to look pretty good at their respective clubs. We were linked with and raving about Youri Tielemans for some time, and now he's looking every bit the seasoned premier league player at Leicester. We were convinced Sadio Mane could do a job on our right wing, and now hes a champions league winner and regular MOTM performer for Liverpool. Also at Liverpool, Fabinho, who would improve almost any team in the world at the moment the way he's playing. This forum was pretty crazy for him for a while and now we see why. And more recently, Ivan Perisic, who is currently playing pretty well at Bayern, and had been courted by us for a solid 2 years.

The reality is that you can never be sure how well a player is going to fit in at a club, or how well they can immediately adapt to a new league with a different speed of play. I think this thread would hold much more weight in season 20/21 if the aforementioned players still hadn't lived up to their billing.
 

Wumminator

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OP i'm assuming you'll be looking forward to it being 2020 next year, because your hindsight is quite remarkable. It's a great point to consider that the majority of our proposed transfer targets haven't gone on to hit the huge heights that we might have expected, but all things considered that really isn't an indicator of how good or bad they would have been playing under different coaches, different teammates and deployed according to different tactics.

If we had signed De Ligt it would have been hailed as one of our biggest transfer coups. Based on everything we know about him, you'd have to expect that he will go on to have a career as a world class defender. Any player as young as he is, who has only known one club and one style of football, should automatically be given at least one full season of adjustment.

If we had signed Pepe, all the threads about signing a Right Winger could have been locked. Having watched a fair amount of his games last season, his talent was so obvious and even though it was an inferior league, the gulf between him and other players making their living as a professional footballer was absolutely huge. He's another who should be given the necessary time to adjust, though I do think his transfer fee was a bit too high, especially considering Arsenal seemed to be the only realistic candidates for signing him.

If we had signed Jovic, i'm not too sure there would have been much hysteria, particularly when you consider his impact on our hypothesized set up. From the base it looks like a young, quick counter attacking team that presses from the front, and i'm not sure how well he fits in to that style. I don't ever remember us being anywhere near favourites to sign him, nor any reliable journalists pretty certain that we were even in for him, so as far as this forum wanting him it was most likely just off the back of looking at his goal record without considering how his individual playing style would actually synchronize with the rest of the team.

Bruno Fernandes may very well still sign with us, and whilst he's "stuck" in a league where he looks like the best player, only the gift of foresight will tell us whether or not he can be good for us or anyone else for that matter.

And as always, there is a counter argument, in that there are so many players we were linked with and the forum was pretty excited about that have gone on to look pretty good at their respective clubs. We were linked with and raving about Youri Tielemans for some time, and now he's looking every bit the seasoned premier league player at Leicester. We were convinced Sadio Mane could do a job on our right wing, and now hes a champions league winner and regular MOTM performer for Liverpool. Also at Liverpool, Fabinho, who would improve almost any team in the world at the moment the way he's playing. This forum was pretty crazy for him for a while and now we see why. And more recently, Ivan Perisic, who is currently playing pretty well at Bayern, and had been courted by us for a solid 2 years.

The reality is that you can never be sure how well a player is going to fit in at a club, or how well they can immediately adapt to a new league with a different speed of play. I think this thread would hold much more weight in season 20/21 if the aforementioned players still hadn't lived up to their billing.

Hang on. As good as some of that sounds, I’m not sure you’re right. When you say Mane would have been a great signing, here’s some of the quotes I found from Mane’s thread


Bizarre, Mkh scored almost twice as many goals as Mane last season, how's he not a better finisher?
!

34m for Mane and 26 for Micky...
Crazy money in England..
He has speed and proved to be quality for Southampton 2 seasons ago. Last season was an on and off season for him as far as i can remember. Also has an attitude problem if i remember right. I think we are fortunate he did not come here in the first place. We'll see how he does at Liverpool but i seriously doubt he is what they need and 30 million pounds for him is just too, too much.

The feck. From Bale to Pedro to Mane.



:confused::nervous::eek:

Please someone shoot me if we sign Mane.
.
(in response to Mane being be moving to United...)
Is Bellion still around?
 

Massive Spanner

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Hang on. As good as some of that sounds, I’m not sure you’re right. When you say Mane would have been a great signing, here’s some of the quotes I found from Mane’s thread












(in response to Mane being be moving to United...)
Using my quote there is really clutching at straws cause I bitch slapped you in this thread.

Especially when my first post in the thread was:

Very good player, overpriced, obviously, but very good
 

Bastian

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I think OP chose Pepe over Sancho as it suited OPs narrative.

Jovic and de Ligt are still very young. But like someone already said, they’d probably all improve us.

It’s less about player x, y, z and more about position x, y, z. We clearly went into the season too thin.
 

RedCurry

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All 4 would have massively improved us, so if the point of this thread is to suggest we dodged 4 bullets, I'll have to disagree.
Would they? And is it worth spending hundreds of millions on players that would take us from 7th to 6th? None of those players were must-haves. With some scouting we could’ve found players that would improve us for fraction of the quoted prices.
 

Andersonson

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I've watched sporting in the Europa League, and my god they are bad. That level is far behind premier league. Bolasie has been their best player the two games I've watched and Bruno has only been good on set pieces.

I think we dodged a bullet
 

Rory 7

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I've watched sporting in the Europa League, and my god they are bad. That level is far behind premier league. Bolasie has been their best player the two games I've watched and Bruno has only been good on set pieces.

I think we dodged a bullet
Interesting. The only one I’ve seen so far is Pepe, not seen any Serie A or La Liga this year, just haven’t had time. That’s why I think this thread is a great idea, we should do it after every window.
 

devilish

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Hang on. As good as some of that sounds, I’m not sure you’re right. When you say Mane would have been a great signing, here’s some of the quotes I found from Mane’s thread












(in response to Mane being be moving to United...)

Actually before you dig some old post. You'll better check the context it was written. For example that post was countered by this post.


Decotron said:
Comparing Mane with Bellion is a pretty stupid comparison.
Which I replied

It was evident that it was a joke
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/sadio-mané.408248/page-4#post-17977357


Oh well. Are you still enjoying this because we didn't make more signings?

https://www.redcafe.net/threads/any...-because-we-didn’t-make-more-signings.449765/
 
Last edited:

Wumminator

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I think OP chose Pepe over Sancho as it suited OPs narrative.

Jovic and de Ligt are still very young. But like someone already said, they’d probably all improve us.

It’s less about player x, y, z and more about position x, y, z. We clearly went into the season too thin.
I could have used Sancho, that’s a fair point. Originally I wanted players who moved or in Bruno’s case we were heavily linked with.
 

Ekeke

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Koulibaly - doing okay, but not as well as Chris Smalling

Skriniar - more of a cog in the machine than a star in Inter's backline. Not doing as well as Chris Smalling
 

Wumminator

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Yeah, for sure they did. No denying that. I was more pointing to the fact that their rebuild is also not done after 1 summer.

But tbf, there’s a middle ground to threads or opinions like these in the OP. We needed more players and we possibly could have gotten 1 or 2 more in but also as the OP says, you have to sometimes be patient and sign the right player, instead of just throwing massive amounts of money around at the flavor of the month type signings.
This is a great thread. What an OTT reaction to the OP. It well worth tracking those players that were hyped.
Interesting. The only one I’ve seen so far is Pepe, not seen any Serie A or La Liga this year, just haven’t had time. That’s why I think this thread is a great idea, we should do it after every window.
Thanks lads, I definitely can’t see why there is a bad reaction to this thread.
 

Crashoutcassius

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I think a similar thread but for managers from that thread a year ago would be good... only a couple of managers, like gasperini, have actually kicked on. Now we have a host more flavour of the month managers stepping in
 

Wumminator

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I think a similar thread but for managers from that thread a year ago would be good... only a couple of managers, like gasperini, have actually kicked on. Now we have a host more flavour of the month managers stepping in
Yes! There was that one manager that everyone thought was good for a short time but then he disappeared after a string of humiliating jobs. We were linked with him for years.

(and then we gave him the job. Mourinho :mad:)
 

OleGunnar20

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Cool idea for a thread.

Would be interested to hear how Barella is getting on from anybody who's been keeping an eye on Inter?

Also Upamecano & Konate, who seemed to be popular alternatives to the Maguire / De-ligt debate.

Had no time to watch anything but United this year.
 

Wumminator

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Cool idea for a thread.

Would be interested to hear how Barella is getting on from anybody who's been keeping an eye on Inter?

Also Upamecano & Konate, who seemed to be popular alternatives to the Maguire / De-ligt debate.

Had no time to watch anything but United this year.
If anyone actually watches these players in detail I would update the OP.
 

VP89

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De Ligt
Plenty of fans were asking for Woodward to go when we signed him, and others criticised the deal to sign Maguire. He moved to Juventus for 65 million and has recently been dropped. Given away two penalties and has struggled to adapt to the pressures of a big league.

Pepe
An example of Arsenal having bigger ambition than us. Cost roughly 80 million pounds and was expected to add a lot to Arsenal’s attack. Converted a key penalty in a win over Aston Villa. Had a good run v Liverpool.

Luca Jović
Given as an example of a fantastic coup by Real Madrid. Used as an example to criticise United’s transfer policy. Recently scored his first goal for Madrid in ten games. In and out of the starting line up.

Bruno Fernandes
United fans were desperate for him. Remained in Sporting despite heavy interest from other clubs. Currently tearing up the Portuguese league.
You forgot Haller, Koulibaly (wanted over Maguire even at the premium cost), Olmo, and there was also noise about that Haaland fella.
 

Lentwood

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I think it’s absolutely a valid thread @Wumminator

I have this debate with our fans all the time. They berate Woodward yet if you check their history, they buzzed off every decision he ever made at the time

Then not two posts later, they advocate making all of the same mistakes again.

“I can’t believe that idiot Woodward signed washed up has-beens like Falcao and Schweinsteiger, we shouldn’t ever be signing other people’s cast-off’s”

Next post - “cant believe Woodward hasn’t signed Eriksen, Bale and Dybala. This “rebuild” is nothing more than a cost-cutting exercise”
 

pascell

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3 of those 4 are young players, who are still adapting to a new league, country and lifestyle, let's give them more time before writing them off and thinking the grass is greener on this side. Bruno would walk into our team also and would vastly improve us.
 

Wumminator

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3 of those 4 are young players, who are still adapting to a new league, country and lifestyle, let's give them more time before writing them off and thinking the grass is greener on this side. Bruno would walk into our team also and would vastly improve us.
Considering how much stock Ole got for targeting British players, it’s worth noting that it often takes foreign players time to adapt. Could we have given them that time this season?
 

Robbie Boy

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We should just have a ‘dig up old posts thread’. It can be bumped every-time we win, lose, draw, a signing fails, a signing is a success, a youngster exceeds expectations, a youngster doesn’t live up to expectations, a rivals manager fails / is a success etc..... That way everyone will get some good old fashioned ‘I was right you were wrong’ at least once a season.

It would also save the cumbersome necessity to think up actual threads every-time one of the above happens.
 

Eleven-Eighteen

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Came to this thread to get footballing updates on players United has been linked with/ ones that the Caf wanted.

Leaving this thread because the first 8 posts have already devolved into arguing.

Never change Caf